<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>Response by Sugar1113</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29628366">Response</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sugar1113/pseuds/Sugar1113'>Sugar1113</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Sherlock (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>BAMF John Watson, I think John would have tried to get revenge, but not super angsty, seriously though, this is a bit sad</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-02-22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-02-22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-15 18:47:31</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>822</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29628366</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sugar1113/pseuds/Sugar1113</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Two nights after Sherlock jumps off of a roof, John runs out of tears.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Sherlock Holmes/John Watson, maybe</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>30</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Response</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Two nights after Sherlock jumps off of a roof, John runs out of tears.<br/>
He’s done. He can’t cry anymore. The tears are gone and all that’s left is pure exhaustion.<br/>
He sits at the window staring out at London and he thinks about Sherlock. He thinks about how the great bloody idiot hadn’t trusted him. Thinks about how his flatmate had ended his own life. Thinks about how the last thing John had said to Sherlock’s face was an insult and now he was never going to see him again.<br/>
John has dealt with death before. He’s watched men and women bleed out and he knows the feeling of being useless.<br/>
Back in the army, he’d managed to save a few. His hands had sewn up gashes and bullet wounds and gaping holes that wouldn’t have closed up on their own.<br/>
John Watson had saved lives once. He’d felt a bit useless then but he’d still saved lives. He’d once thought that that was the worst it was going to get.<br/>
He was wrong.<br/>
Sitting at the window, John closes his eyes and remembers. Remembers Sherlock in all of his wonderful intensity and confusing manners.<br/>
Sherlock is gone and John thinks to himself that he will not rest again until he’s taken down the network of the man who took away his best friend.</p><p> </p><p>It takes mere hours to get in touch with old army buddies. Ones who he’d put in a good word for whenever they were considered for a promotion to a higher level of importance.<br/>
John’s old friends give him classified data on Jim Moriarty and the criminal’s network.<br/>
John swears to them that the information won’t be taken from him and he memorized every fact that was ever known about Moriarty.<br/>
Then he starts.</p><p> </p><p>He doesn’t start at the bottom or at the top, but right in the middle.<br/>
He takes down corrupt businessmen with anonymous phone calls to the police and planted evidence. He tracks down drug cartels and makes sure that he has video evidence for when the police come and take them all down.<br/>
He starts in the middle and works his way down the ladders. Once each branch is taken out completely, he goes back to the middle again.<br/>
He knows there is someone else doing this too. Someone else trying to take down Moriarty’s network. John doesn’t care why they’re doing it and as they circle the edges and pick off the lowest on the ladder one by one, John hopes that they get whatever they were looking for.<br/>
The other person has more resources than John does but John still has his contacts from the military.<br/>
He’d been a Captain once. And an even better doctor. So everyone he’d once had under his command or care was a resource that he never overlooked.</p><p>It ended up taking a year for John and the other person to fully dismantle Moriarty’s web.<br/>
The last piece of it, Moriarty’s right hand, shakes John’s hand before they fight.<br/>
“Well done,” Moran tells him. “I would’ve liked having you on our side.”<br/>
“Maybe I would’ve,” John agrees. They both know it’s a half truth. Maybe John would’ve been on Moriarty’s side in another life. But any chance or that died with Sherlock.<br/>
Sebastian and John toss their guns aside and fight with their knives and their bodies.<br/>
They use the skills they’d learned from experience in Afghanistan and other places and they’re well matched. Unfortunately for Sebastian Moran, he doesn’t have what John has.<br/>
Sebastian may have lost his genius, but John lost his best friend. The thing that John has that Sebastian doesn’t? Conviction.<br/>
John wins the fight and knocks Moran unconscious. He arranges over the phone for one of his former unit members (who now worked with the secret service) to pick up the final sniper and then he walks away.</p><p>Now that his job is down, he should be at peace. But Sherlock is still gone and without the endless pieces of Moriarty’s web to distract him, John finds himself flailing.<br/>
He feels as though he’s been tossed out into the sea with his hands and feet bound.<br/>
He’s sinking and he can’t swim and no one it here to save him.</p><p>He goes back to 221B and when he sits down at the window, he’s greeted with Sherlock coming in an hour later.<br/>
He feels that seeing Sherlock is a sign that he’s finally ready.<br/>
So he takes his gun out of the holster and raises it to his head.<br/>
Sherlock, who John knows is a hallucination,  looks panicked and rushes forward.<br/>
John closes his eyes but before he can pull the trigger, the gun is knocked from his hand.<br/>
At this, John thinks something must have gone wrong and for a second, he stops focusing on staying conscious and staying a part of the real world.<br/>
After that, everything goes dark.</p>
  </div></div>
</body>
</html>